Windies did not sell vote to Asian bloc: WICB

Port of Spain:West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has rejected allegations that it sold its vote to the Asian bloc during last month's ICC meeting, which awarded the 2011 World Cup rights to the sub-continent, saying that the support was only aimed at securing a close working relationship with the BCCI.

''We live in the real world and we must understand that when people want to achieve an objective, they try to get support for that objective. Clearly, the India Board of Control wanted to have support for their objective and we did speak. We made it clear that our position was that we were interested in building a relationship with India,'' WICB President Ken Gordon told the Caribbean Media Communication here.

The WICB vote swung the decision in Asia's favour and it managed to win the rights despite submitting a late bid. The Asian bid from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, beat the joint bid placed by Australia and New Zealand.

Mr Gordon said the Windies board's decision to support Asia was in the interest of the Caribbean as it would ensure a good relationship with the BCCI, which would help the region's cricket and rubbished suggestions that the board sold the vote in lieu of a financial deal.

''We didn't have a vote for sale. We were interested in building a relationship and they indicated that they would like to do the same and our position as far as the vote was concerned was, 'look if your bid is a fully competitive bid and if it is on par with all things being equal, we will support your bid because friends support each other','' he clarified.

He said the WICB would have supported the Aussie-Kiwi bid if it had found anything lacking in the Asian bid.

''Other people in other parts of the world support each other as well but we said 'if your bid is not in our view, comparable, we cannot support you because we don't think that would be acting in the interest of cricket','' he added.

''So all this talk about a deal and so on, if you call that a deal, that's fine, but as far as I am concerned we acted in the way that anyone who is concerned about their self-interest, would want to act,'' he said.